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Introduction

Criminal informants provide important information to the justice system, but they also pose serious risks. We hope this website will help attorneys, journalists, advocates, and families to better understand this vital area of public policy.

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WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS

Criminal informants are famously unreliable. Jailhouse snitch testimony often leads to wrongful conviction. Over 45 percent of all innocent people exonerated from death sentences were wrongfully convicted based on the testimony of a lying criminal informant. This makes snitches the leading cause of wrongful conviction in U.S. capital cases.

YOUNG INFORMANTS

Police sometimes use children as young as 14 as informants. These children may be exposed to drugs, violence, and other criminal activities as they work to get information for their handlers. Some have been killed. California and New Jersey have laws restricting the practice: in other states police have discretion to use juvenile informants.

INFORMANT CRIMES

Some informants are serious criminals who receive leniency for their own crimes. The FBI has been known to use murderers as informants. Many jurisdictions permit drug dealers to continue selling drugs in exchange for cooperation. In 2011, the crimes committed by FBI informants alone totaled over 5,600.

URBAN COMMUNITIES PAY THE PRICE

Informants are a staple of drug enforcement. This means that where drug enforcement is heaviest, informant activity is also heaviest. Because drug arrests occur disproportionately in low-income African American neighborhoods, those residents must live with the crime, violence, and distrust that go with criminal informant use.

REFORM

Many states are rethinking their criminal informant policies. Some have passed laws restricting the use of jailhouse snitch witnesses. Some have created new rules for disclosure and accountability. The U.S. Congress is considering a number of reforms that would improve transparency and safety. In the future, the laws governing criminal informants will likely look very different than they do today.

Resources

Recent Blog Posts

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Monday, March 29, 2010

"Snitch-jacketing"

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the FBI has just released for the first time hundreds of memos regarding its "special file room," in which it has stored for decades information considered too sensitive for its central filing system. As described by the Boston Globe, the special filing system is designed "to restrict access [to information] severely and, in more sinister instances, some experts assert, prevent the Congress and the public from getting their hands on it." The information includes such things as plans to relocate Congress if Washington is attacked, files on high-profile mob figures and their political friends, as well as the FBI's own questionable activities such as spying on domestic political organizations. From the Globe:

Other files on domestic spying that were routed to the special file room involved "black nationalist extremists." There were also files about an "extremely sensitive counterintelligence technique" called snitch-jacketing, which apparently involved the FBI spreading false information that members of a targeted group were government informants in order to sow conflict within their membership.

While "snitch-jacketing" was a new term to me, it's an old concept. An important historical strand of informant use has been the government's creation and deployment of informants to infiltrate and disrupt civilian political activities. I've blogged about this issue here in the context of FBI infiltration of Muslim communities; Gary Marx is the preeminent expert on this subject.